When we moved to Singapore it struck me that I immediately felt very relaxed about being there. I hadn't expected to feel like I fitted in there so quickly, but from the start I never felt like I didn't belong. Eventually it dawned on me that it came from being just one of a huge group of ex-pats who live in the country. There are something like half a million ex-pats on the island, plus the number of tourists passing through there each year much at least equal that, so no-one batted an eyelid at pale-skinned me prowling around the city, whether it was in a hindu temple, a Chinese fish market, or a Malay hawkers stall. This is a huge contrast to the little Dutch town which we call home, where ironically I look like all the natives, yet stick out like the proverbial dogs balls being one of the few foreigners here.
As long as I don't open my mouth it's ok, of course (how often does a woman admit that?). However as soon as I start speaking my own particular brand of Dutch I've grown accustomed to seeing that spark of curiosity in the other person's eyes, and inevitably the questions starts. I was braced for that when we returned again last month, that feeling of not belonging. So it was a huge surprise during the first week of school when I walked into school and lots of the other mum's whom I hadn't seen for 2.5 years gave me a smile and said "hi, we heard you were back. How was Singapore?"
Suddenly the place feels a lot more like home afterall.
1 comment:
I think we are one of the most impolite people in the world (us dutch, I mean). Any foreigner is regarded with suspicion and told to learn the lingo and then made a fool of for not being able to pronounce some onscure dialect properly, let alone understand it.
And we ourselves can't even spell!
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